London – Parking and Walking
Posted: Tue 22 September, 2015 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, London, Travel Leave a comment »I’ve written before about my discovery that London’s Barbican Centre is bloody great for visiting London on a weekend – and the weekend just gone reinforced that for me.
Again, I drove in early-ish on both days (I was at Barbican by 9.30 on both occasions) and the run in was easy.
Parking was worse on the Saturday than I’d seen it before – but I still found plenty of spaces, albeit on the next level up, rather than the one I usually use. (It turned out that Barbican was hosting a graduation ceremony thing for the Open University, which explained why it was so busy) Still not a problem though.
In this case, I was walking down to Tobacco Dock – roughly 5km away – as the weather was great, and I had plenty of time to do it. (The venue doors didn’t open ’til 11.30 on both days – so I knew I was OK, regardless) So I got time to explore a bit, wander around, see stuff, and generally enjoy early-ish mornings in City of London.
The best (for me) was wandering down, turning a corner, and unexpectedly seeing the Tower of London, with the Shard behind it…
All told, it meant I got to explore some bits I didn’t know all that well, cover a decent amount of kilometres, and still do everything I wanted to at Meatopia – so just a win all round, really.
Even better, once I got home yesterday I filled up the car with what’d been used over the weekend. £30 of fuel, £18 for parking (Barbican put up their prices at the start of September by a whole pound – shocking!) – so it cost me less to do things that way than one day’s train and Underground fares would’ve been. Not bad, not bad at all.
Stasis – Weight and Health
Posted: Wed 16 September, 2015 Filed under: 2014/15, Change, Cynicism, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, Thoughts, Weigh Less, Weight Loss Leave a comment »It seems to be the season for stasis – and for thinking about it, which is kind of odd. But there we go.
Anyway, one of my goals for this year was to lose more weight – I lost two stone in 2014, and wanted to do a similar thing this year.
Well, that hasn’t happened.
(At this point I know I have to remind myself that there’s still three-and-a-bit months to go of the year, blah blah – but still, two stone in three months is less-than-likely)
It’s annoying in some ways, but in others it’s been an interesting process.
I have definitely, and visibly, lost inches. My strength and muscle have improved significantly, particularly since getting to do regular gym visits. But the weight has stayed the same.
In general, I’m OK with that. I know I’ve improved, and have reduced body fat by about 20% (although there’s a way to go still) over the last eighteen months. I know I can beast through a 10Km walk in 100mins (an average speed of 6Kph) and I’m content with that. I know I can also do more on weight machines at the gym than the majority of the other users I see.
There’s still a good way to go – I’ve got my own targets, both short- and long-term, and I hope to get there. But I know I’ve made progress, I can see it and I can feel it.
I do wish that those bloody scales would show it though. I step on most mornings, so I know it’s not some weird coincidence that only sees me measure when I’m that weight. It varies by a pound or two either way – but that’s it.
I suppose I should be happy that my body is in some kind of balance/stasis, that it’s managing to replace fat with denser (note, not heavier, just denser – that’s a bugbear that I’ll write about some other time) muscle in a balanced way. And in most ways I’m content with it, with knowing there are changes that just don’t show on the scales.
But I’d still like to actually weigh less…
Stasis – Locationally Static
Posted: Tue 15 September, 2015 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Change, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Milton Keynes, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s somewhat scary, and horrifically organised, but I’ve just signed another tenancy agreement for the current house, so I’ll now be here ’til at least November 2016.
That will make it the longest time I’ve lived in one place since I left home a long time ago. No-one is more surprised about this than me.
In fairness, there’s a few reasons to stay – and not enough to move on. Reasons for staying again include
- It’s well-located, and easy to get to anywhere else (which helps negate the travelling itch)
- It’s a decent enough place, and suits me for 95% of the time, as well as facilitating my anti-social side
- I’m kind-of settled for a while (and so are the cats)
- There’s nowhere else I particularly think “*That* is where I want to be living – let’s go!“
This time next year, things may be different. There’s a couple of significant change things happening over the next twelve months, which will make moving a bit easier in a years’ time (assuming I want to) and which contribute to staying put this year.
Not least among those is the simple fact of time passing. This time next year, my bankruptcy will have been cleared for three years, which puts it an ‘acceptable’ time in the past for credit checks. Still another two years before it disappears completely, but there appears to be a ‘wisdom’ that if someone has kept their fiscal nose clean for three years afterwards, it’s more likely that they’ll continue to do so in the future.
At the same time, I’ll have been done with the repayments plan (that expires in January) and will instead be putting the same amount directly into savings, which will be helping on building things up decently.
So yes, for the next year-and-a-bit I’m staying in the same place. And I’m surprisingly OK and non-twitchy about it…
Longest Reign
Posted: Wed 9 September, 2015 Filed under: Media, People, Thoughts 2 Comments »Today, Queenie becomes the longest-reigning monarch of the UK – 65 days, 7 months and 2 days (at the time of writing, naturally)
I’m not the greatest fan of the monarchy – although neither am I a disliker of it as such, I’m just completely ambivalent about the entire thing – but that’s one heck of a time, however you look at it.
Whatever though, it’s always good to be able to resurrect this image – and yes, I know, it’s Photoshopped, rah rah – which you can’t help imagine is what she’s doing to Charles on a regular basis…
Privacy Breach
Posted: Wed 2 September, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Agency Idiocy, Business, Corbett, Customer Services, Geeky, Laziness, Marketing, People, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »Yet again, today there’s a story about another place revealing a confidential list of customers in emails – and as usual, in what’s known as a Corbett round here (courtesy of a certain Irish marketing person) it’s looking like the leaker sent the email using CC instead of BCC.
In this case, the information is even more sensitive than usual, as it’s people who’ve used a particular STI clinic in London, and may have also revealed their HIV status. Oh, bloody whoops.
It amazes me how often this seems to happen – and how easy it should be to fix.
The first answer is, obviously, train people.
But after that, it’s about defending against laziness and stupidity. But even that’s pretty easy.
All it really needs is a block on recipients in CC. If you’re sending an email and it’s got more than (say) 10 addresses in the CC field, it simply asks if you’re sure you want to send it with those people in CC rather than BCC. That’s an email-client thing – but is easy to do.
It can’t be that difficult – my own email clients all already ask if I want to send an email with no attachments if the message contains keywords like ‘attached’ or ‘CV’, after all.
A similar thing could be done on the mail-server as well – put in a rule that if there’s more than [defined limit] of addresses in the CC, it doesn’t send without an authorisation, an acknowledgement that this is OK.
There will still be the odd blithering fucktrumpet who manages to send out a whole mailing-list in CC (or even To) – but at least make it harder for them to do so.
Surely that’s not asking too much?
The Beginning of The End – 2015
Posted: Tue 1 September, 2015 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season, Media, Television Leave a comment »
It’s the start of September, and that means that we’re in the run-up to the Festering Season.
The signs are all there – X-Factor started last weekend, and Strictly Come Dancing starts this coming weekend. I don’t watch either of them, but they’re both timed to finish up just before the Festering Season, and as such they qualify as the harbingers of doom.
I’m sure there are other pre-cursors to it (perfume ads on TV, for one) but these two are the main ones I notice now. It’s a sad state of affairs.